by CHRIS BARRY

Name: "Adam Lester"

Age: 23

Occupation: Pro gambler/businessman

Bio: This hard workin', hard lovin' Westmount resident first realized he had a gift for gambling back when he was a kid and would regularly walk away from high school poker games holding all of his friends' money. Recognizing "if you take a friend for $1,000 some night, well, you'll find you're not really going to be friends anymore," young "Adam" started gambling with a bookie at age 14 and sneaking into the Montreal casino at 17. These days, when not engaged in one of his several businesses or travelling the globe on the international poker circuit, "Adam" regularly pulls in a few bucks hitting local "underground social clubs" where poker is the activity of choice. "Are they illegal? I don't know. To me, no, but to police officers, I dunno, maybe. But are they hurting anybody? Of course not." He just last week returned from a tournament in Costa Rica where he raked in a cool five grand. "Poker is a business and you must treat it as such. It is not gambling, it's a business. Well okay, it's gambling. But what I really do is take advantage of people who play badly."

Might an amateur have any chance whatsoever of leaving the table with "Adam's" hard-earned cash? Possibly. "In the short term there's an incredible amount of luck involved, so yeah, a bad player can certainly win the first few hands, but over time their luck factor will dry up. No question about it."

How much of winning poker is skill? "I'd say in a tournament - not a cash game, which is something completely different - that it's maybe 60 per cent skill and 40 per cent luck, and in a cash game, maybe 80 per cent luck. Gambling is just math. If you're good at math, you'll be a good gambler."

Does he have some kind of Rainman thing going on? Nothing especially obvious.

How often he's mortgaged his sister's firstborn so as to get in on a good bet: Never. "I don't need poker to pay my bills, I've just been extremely successful with it."

How much he figures he's up over the past four years: Approximately $60,000.

Does he regularly practice his poker face in front of the mirror? "Nah, not really, not so much in the mirror, but hey, if you have a talent, you should work on it. Actually, I didn't even realize I needed a poker face till I was 18."

One of "Adam's" finer moments: Being "one slot away" from an appearance on The World Series of Poker TV show last year. "I haven't won my way in yet but I promise you I'll get there - and this is the year."

Musical preferences: Eminem, Jay-Z.

Last book read: Super System II, by Doyle Brunson.

Words of wisdom: "Know who to play, when to play, and when to quit."

Comments? dimwit@openface.ca